Chapter 10: Stronghold

"Next stop, Barbarian Village!" yelled the captain, even though Thuw and Runecraft were the only two passengers. Thuw got up off the rickety bench, and crossed the bridge, but Runecraft had already teleported himself there. Thuw's eye twitched.

"You ignore your powers of teleportation when we head all through a forest and over the sea but now you use it to travel three metres?!" Thuw said irritably. Runecraft frowned, then took out the runes he had used.

"Found them on the ship's floor. I'd used up my other stock of runes in the fight, and I found these about halfway through the journey. We'd already payed, and we were halfway there, what was the point?" Thuw dropped the annoyed expression, but didn't smile - it had been a long journey. They had just left the ship, when a goat-horned-helmeted man came along, and raised his fists at the captain's boat.

"What're ye doing here, ye swine?" shouted Sigurd the canoe-master of barbarian village. "This is a river for 'dem canoes, yer obstructen' the river." Sigurd was indeed right, the captain's ship was now blocking the way between canoes coming from in front and behind, and people were yelling at the captain. Thuw and Runecraft realized that they had been seen getting off that boat, and they hastily crept off, as what would be a very difficult and awkward maneuver was going on. It was barely a few paces before they had reached the tiny village of the Barbarians, best known as just that, Barbarian Village. Thuw and Runecraft walked over to the centre, where ore lay in a few mining rocks, surrounding a hole, with a ladder stretching down at a dark hole. Thuw eyes it nervously.

"Not going down there are we?" Thuw pointed the hole out to Runecraft.

"Afraid we are," Runecraft was torn between a grimace and a smirk. "We're not gonna let that girl, Zeldana dis-spirit our training, but we know now that we need to be trained against every move she's got. I drew a map of the strong-hold of security below, I know just what we're up against, but we need combat training, and the stronghold provides that." Thuw was confused.

"Up against? Map? Strong-hold? Talk like I know what you're saying only when I actually know." Runecraft smiled, a conjured an orb in the air in front of him. It unfolded into a sheet of paper which looked as if it had barely been folded twice, let alone scrunched up into a ball. Runecraft had his hands gestured towards it, though it seemed like he was levitating the sheet. It turned round, and Thuw saw a map of a sort of labyrinth, labelled with coloured dots, a colour code at the bottom. Suddenly, three other sheets flew out from behind it, and were so close to the first sheet, that it looked like it was all one folded map. On the other sheets were other labyrinths like the first, Thuw guessed that these must be different floors, or areas.

"The barbarian stronghold of security." Runecraft said, gesturing to the whole of the map with his head. "Split into ... four levels, so far as I know. On every level there are rooms lined with monsters, you must get through doors that ask security questions first, then you can train with the monsters, they come in higher levels when you proceed." Thuw gulped.

"Training on high level monsters?"

"Na, na, the first enemies are just ..."

"Minotaurs?!" Thuw stood, shaking, outside the first door of the stronghold, next to the skeleton.

"Well ... that's funny, last time I checked goblins stood outside here. This looks no good." One of the Minotaurs grunted, turned their head round, and roared at them.

"Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Thuw edged back.

"Scrape you off the ceiling, shall I?" Runecraft said merrily, but only for a second before his frown came back to his face. "Looks like we're gonna be practicing magic on these horror dudes. I trust you brought some runes?" Runecraft crafted some of his own. Thuw stood up.

"Why would I have runes? I haven't learnt to craft them yet, and you never gave me a massive supply of them," said Thuw, turning his pockets inside-out. Runecraft raised a finger in the air

"Good point." He suspended the runes he held in mid-air, then levitated them upwards, they merged into a ball of light magic, glowing brightly, and runes started to shuffle out from it at all angles, all with different rune enscriptions. Runecraft cast the orb aside at the Minotaur, and didn't pay attention to the orb that had entered the presence of the Minotaur and imploded the beast in a flash of blinding light. The scattered Runes came down to Runecraft's level, and dissapeared suddenly. Thuw was only mildly surprised to find the runes appear in his hands, un-expected magic was a strong part of Runecraft to Thuw.

"Righty-o" Runecraft clapped his hands together "The Ultimate Warrior, be one, and go get 'em Minotaurs!" Thuw remained where he was.
"You talk about the ancient creature of legend alone as if it were your local shop-keeper."

"Yeah, but find one time when you need to go into a shop and start to cast spells on the shop-keeper." Runecraft smiled. "Like I said, go get them!" Thuw shrugged, but his eyes did not falter, he concentrated hard upon the jumble of runes in front of him, and tried to assort the right ones together in the spell.

Wind strike, Wind strike, come on, Wind strike ... "WIND STRIKE!" Thuw yelled. The runes had combined exactly and, within moments, formated the wind strike that hit the Minotaur, dead on. The Minotaur roared, the spell must have worked. Red mist began to form above it, and solidified to make the number "3" in sparkling, shining red lettering. Runecraft was impressed at Thuw's first major hit to a high-level monster.

"Three Tanes of damage, for your first try - besides the chicken - that's pretty damn excellent." Runecraft smiled, and clapped a hand on his shoulder, and just as Thuw's mouth started to open, Runecraft answered the question for him.

"A Tane is a knock of damage done to an opponent, everyone has Tanes, it's their health measure, and when they're taken away, that's one Tane gone. You took three on your second or third strike." Thuw's mouth opened again, but Runecraft answered again, "The first strike was the chicken, when we first practised."

'Wow', Thuw thought 'He must be able to read minds or something'

"Yeah, course I can, you'll learn it eventually," Runecraft said, smiling